Risa
History Marissa knew little about the Garou that sired her. She knew her mother, Marie, was once a Silver Fang who was driven from her tribe for her crime. Falcon just couldn’t bear the shame of having one of his own break the First Law. Prissy, egotistical bird. She’d been Lone Wolfed and sent off to either die with her ill-begotten offspring or convince some other tribe to take her. They never quite counted on her thumbing her nose at the Nation and going Ronin but that’s how it went. No, Marissa had no clue about her father except the face it didn’t seem like he was a Fang. He certainly wasn’t there with him and probably for the better. Marissa might have something unpleasant to say to him. Maybe that was the reason Falcon demanded her mother’s exile, the Metis thought. Her father had been fresh blood and not a first cousin. How shameful to lob a turd in the punch bowl. Why /did/ her mother keep her around anyway? Marissa asked her once when she was old enough to understand the disgusted looks other Garou gave them - gave her. “Because I wouln’t let them win.” Said her mother, full of pride and arrogance. So that was where they stood, was it? She was a task to be completed. To say the relationship between mother and daughter was cool would be accurate enough. Marie raised her daughter to survive because to do any less would mean she’d lost it all for nothing. Marissa remained because she needed those lessons. It’s likely Marie did love her in some fashion, Marissa would muse once they’d parted ways. She wouldn’t have seen to her spirit ally otherwise. Her mother could have left her with nothing but instead she sacrificed one last time to forge that bond. What a way to show love. Saddle her with an asshole of a spirit. For all of it, Marissa rarely left her mother’s side. She just couldn’t help it. To think she would be left behind send the Metis into panic attacks, frenzies that would have her tearing through anything in her way to reach her mother if she was forcibly kept away. Life was unpleasant but to Marissa it was the only life she knew. They slept in abandoned buildings, curled up in the rain under overgrown scrub at the edges of the cities, even a few times in drainage pipes when nothing else could fit her until she learned to change. Food was what they could catch or scavenge. Rarely the dollar menu of a fast food joint when they could spare a few dollars for a treat. Most of the money her mother made doing jobs went to other things - clothing, supplies, paying handsomely for others to teach her a needed gift or ritual or procure a given talen ingredient. Wolves could hunt, no need to spend it on canned beans. They always kept on the move but always remained near a sept, both for jobs and to ‘keep the dark things at bay’. Marissa could hear them many nights. The hoots, yips, howls. The growls and chatters, scratches and screeches. The Wyrm was always out there just beyond the proverbial firelight of the protectorates and it was (more often than she cared to admit) not always enough. There were many times Marie shoved Awakened herbs down the throat of her shrieking and clawing daughter just to try and put her into dreamless sleeps, lest the child be plagued all night by nightmares full of ugly whispers. As Marissa grew to her First Change, Marie was feeling the strain of eight years living alone and tending to an emotionally intense child. She had numerous scars from battling to control a frightened or angry Marissa. More scars from the dangerous and deadly jobs septs sent her on to complete. Even more scars from the Wyrm that puckered across her body and itched at the back of her mind. Knowing her task was almost complete and her time running short, she threw all she had left into ensuring her daughter would be prepared to live on her own. Exhausted and beat down, when she felt the child was ready she Summoned a spirit willing to watch over her. The hyena, Upengo, that arrived was weak and minor, barely formed and desperate at the wild promises the once-Fang offered. And she delivered, giving over the Gnosis and Rage she had left after years of sacrifice to fuel the spirit and forge the bond between it and her daughter. Then she bid Marissa to go. Her task was done. She’d taken her crime and succeeded where they thought she had failed. The Ragabash Metis flew into a wild fury. NO! She would not leave. How could her mother just cast her aside like that? Here’s your parting gift now GTFO? But her mother rebuffed her. Marissa struck at her with claw and fang in her terror at fury, frantic not to be left alone and enraged at the perceived betrayal. She failed to remember her mother’s fresh sacrifice. Lacking in Rage and spiritual essence, she had no recourse to heal from the wounds her daughter struck in her tantrum. Years of sacrifice and she died under the claws of her daughter. A Ronin never dies well. In the end, she died by her crime. Marissa lived bitterly after. She followed the lessons she learned, going sept to sept and performing whatever menial or horrible tasks they felt like throwing her way in exchange for a safe night’s sleep in their territory, some cash, only rarely something more valuable that usually earned her a world of pain for the tasks she had to perform for it. Few Garou were willing to deal with her. A Ronin Metis was disconcerting, but her poor reactions and social skills made even the most simple negotiations a hair-raising affair. She said once she could likely be tracked by the trail of blood she left from sept to sept and most of the time she was cast out from anywhere she visited. When the opportunity presented itself she’d travel the road with a few other Ronin. There was safety in number, even if the company was rough and largely untrustworthy. Even half-sane company was better than the alternative shadowing their movements. For the Metis, nightmares were an almost nightly occurrence as the Wyrm whispered its sweet promises. Some mornings, waking exhausted to the core of her very spirit, it was tempting to just give in. Still she endured, driven by the ego inherited from her mother and the driving teeth of Upengo. So she kept walking. As the Wyrm grow more powerful and septs fell, the places to find refuge became fewer and fewer. The stories of her mother kept the Metis from petitioning to join a tribe and the treatment she received never encouraged her to change her mind, for all it would have provided the respite from the worst of the Wyrm’s hounding. Still she needed to find shelter and choices were slim. Hopefully Saint Claire would be the sanctuary she desperately needed. Current Events Having set up a crash camp in an old warehouse off Bridge Street, it was only a matter of time before someone caught on she was in town. First it was Briari (in her superhero guise) who got the snippish rejection of a few bucks so Risa could buy a real meal versus a roasted rat. Second, Justin and Felix came a'sniffing on the Walker's tips. Literally and figuratively. While Risa was clean of the Wyrm she was not clean of manners and took offense to the responses to her attitude. She's not on the path to making a single friend, having shown herself to be defensive and rather nasty of disposition in the manner of a cornered animal, but she wasn't killed on the spot. She almost was later when she showed up at one of the moots and sent the Alpha in a tizzy. Oops. After a time spent doing some background manual labor for the sept to make up for being a generally rude little thing, she was finally smacked around in the head long enough by Alicia to actually listen. Heavily encouraged to go talk to the Black Furies about a rite that could help her overcome her pretty hefty mental baggage, the Ronin left after her services were done. Appearance Marissa is a very slender woman, the sort who looks like she’s either quite athletic or barely fed. Or maybe it’s a mix of both. She’s certainly sparing of any extra flesh on her body which leaves a surprisingly fine bone structure underneath. There may be some good blood in there but it’s lost under the too-lean structure and the sharpness of her angles. Little about her appears soft in the way a viper doesn’t appear gentle. Her skin is a sunned Caucasian and her hair is chin length, cut ragged at the ends. It’s an overall silver gray color, unusual considering she’s a young adult at best, but given it fades to black at the ends would suggest dye as opposed to natural. Her eyes are a light brown that borders on amber. Clothing is modern styling, though generic and simple versus the expensive stylish that’s there for looks versus function. In her lupine forms, she is a salt and peppery wolf. Her overall body is lighter, more gray-white, but there’s more darker hairs mixed to give her a saddle, darker legs and tail body. The most concentration of dark hairs is across her face in a mask from the tip of her nose, sharp along cheekbones, and ending at the back of her skull and covering ears where it’s predominantly black. Eyes are a bright, sharp yellow gold. She’s got several scars from a rough life but nothing pronounced that was likely deadly. Sheet Info Category:Metis Category:Ragabash Category:Cliath Category:Ronin Category:Past PCs